


Burden of Guilt

by popsicletheduck



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (grog likes the f word), Angst, Blood, Canon Compliant, Canon Typical Swearing, Gen, Lots of Angst, Nightmares, lots of dream symbolism because why not, one of the worst weeks in percy's life now in handy fic form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 18:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11606043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsicletheduck/pseuds/popsicletheduck
Summary: Percy's made some mistakes in his life, alright? He knows this. It'd be nice if his subconscious stopped bringing it up.Spoilers through episode 68.





	Burden of Guilt

He’s running, staggering, tripping over roots, desperately keeping his sister’s hand tight in his grasp. Behind him he can hear the thugs gaining, the deep twang of bow strings, the whistling of arrows whizzing past, the thunk of them finding purchase in the tree trunks around them.

His lungs are burning, his legs barely keeping him upright.

He keeps running.

He keeps running as branches whip at his face, as he stumbles to his knees and then back up again, as he tugs mercilessly at his sister’s hand.

He keeps running, until there’s a horrible, sickening wet thump, and another, and another.

He keeps running, until the hand goes limp in his grasp.

The sudden dead weight spins him around, still holding tight, not letting go.

Some distant logical part of him knows what to expect, his sister lying sprawled on the forest floor, arrows protruding from her back, shot down as she ran. He knows. He saw. He can never forget.

It’s not his sister.

There lying, impossibly, on her back, black shafted arrows buried in her shoulder, chest, neck, blank eyes staring sightless at the night sky above, the ground around her soaked with blood turned black by the moonlight-

-is Vex’ahlia.

He tries to take a breath, but his body no longer obeys him. It can’t be true, it can’t, can’t, can’t-

Something slams into him, knocking him back against a nearby tree, a blade digging into his throat. He meets the furious gaze of Vax’ildan.

“How could you do that to my sister,” Vax hisses, dagger digging in a little deeper, rage crackling unbridled in his eyes.

“I, I didn’t, it wasn’t-”

He glances back at the body and-

The arrow are gone. In their place are small, round wounds. Too circular to be from a dagger, too jagged to be from a rapier.

Bullet wounds.

And it’s no longer just Vex. Sprawled next to her is Keyleth, Scanlan, Grog, even Trinket, all slumped unmoving. All riddled with bullet holes.

“You did this to them,” Vax hisses again. “You killed them.”

“I didn’t. I promise you, I didn’t!”

“Of course you did.” The voice is soft but the words dig into him with the same force as Vax’s knife.

Pike, soft white hair framing her face, full plate gleaming slightly in the scant moonlight-

-one perfect bullet hole in the middle of her forehead, staring up at him with dead, sightless eyes.

“Haven’t you realized, Percy,” she continues, “that people around you don’t tend to have much of a lifespan?”

There’s a sudden ringing shot, slightly muffled, and Vax stumbles back a step, hands grasping at his stomach, blood already dripping through his fingers.

The gun in his hand in warm.

“No!” He tries to fling the gun away, in disgust, in desperation, but the can’t. Black tendrils have sprouted from the weapon, wrapping around his hand, his arm, creeping toward his shoulder.

“You’re going to kill us all, Percival,” Vax says. There’s no anger, no betrayal in his voice, just resignation. Disappointment.

Somehow that’s so much worse.

Vax, already staggering, falls to his knees. 

He tries to move forward, to stop his fall, to do something. He can’t.

Vax’s eyes roll up into his head. His body goes limp. He falls face down, lying in a spreading puddle of his own blood.

The black tendrils have crested his shoulder, creeping across his torso. Wrapping around his neck. The horror show in front of him, the bodies of his friends killed by his own hand, starts to fade as the tendrils begin to squeeze, darkness creeping in along the edges of his vision.

He doesn’t fight it.

What does he have to fight for anymore?

As the darkness takes him, he hears a horrible, guttural laugh, and for a moment, he almost thinks he sees a pair of glowing red eyes staring at him from the void.

 

Percy wakes with a start, bolting upright, gasping for breath. Distantly, he’s surprised he can breathe at all. He’s not dead, then, which is a nice surprise. It’s a much less pleasant surprise to find himself listing sideways, and he almost falls completely before he remembers they’re sleeping up in the trees again, in Keyleth’s web hammocks, and carefully rights himself. Laying back down, he begins to compose himself. He is well use to dealing with nightmares, more so than he would like to be, and he falls into a familiar state of working to regulate his breathing. In, out. In, out. 

The air is cooler and wetter than he had been expecting, and above him he can just make out a handful of stars beyond the leaves and cloud cover. It’s nice, even if it’s not home. 

“Hey, de Rolo.” A hand shakes the edge of his hammock. Vax. “We’ve got second watch.”

Percy climbs down carefully. He understands the reasons for sleeping in the trees, but that doesn’t mean he particularly likes doing so.

Vex mutters something about owlbears in the area as he and Vax relieve her and Zahra, but disappears into the trees before Vax can ask for any more specifics. Percy takes a seat near the small fire, his guns within easy reach but not actually on him. The nightmare still clings to him, uncomfortable and sticky, like drying blood.

“Percival.” Vax spins suddenly from staring out across the lake to staring at him. 

“Yes?”

“de Rolo. How’re you doing?”

Perhaps he wasn’t quite as silent in dealing with his nightmare as he thought. Damned half elven hearing.

“A lot’s going on, a lot, but. It hasn’t been that long.” Vax sits on the other side of the fire, the shadows highlighting the marks of fey ancestry visible in his features.

“No, I’m pleased with the distraction. Honestly.” _A conclave of dragons attacking hadn’t quite been the distraction I was planning on, but it will do. I can make do._ “I feel…”

“Has Orthax fully left the building?”

“I don’t, I don’t hear anything anymore, if that’s what you’re asking.” _He still shows up in my dreams all the time, but, then, so do the Briarwoods._

“It is.”

“I think. I think all I’m manifesting at this point are scars.” _And those won’t go away, no matter what any of us do._ “Honestly I feel a little lost now, I don’t. I’m really not entirely sure what I’m doing with myself.” _The demon might be gone, but the man who built these horrible weapons is still here. I built them, I built my life for vengeance. What happens when a gun no longer has a target?_

“Can I tell you. I believe you are a good man.”

 _You’re going to kill us all, Percival._ “Thank you.”

“If you listen to your better angels. And they are. They’re within your friends.”

 

Less than twenty four hours later, he’s staring down at Vex’s corpse. 

And it might not have been a bullet that killed her, but he certainly pulled the trigger.

 

_How could you do that to my sister._

“You just opened it? Just like that?.”

_Haven’t you realized, Percy, that people around you don’t tend to have much of a lifespan?_

“Goodnight, Percival.”

_You’re going to kill us all._

 

~

 

He’s running, feet pounding, footsteps echoing against the stone. He doesn’t look behind him, but he knows it’s chasing him, blood and death and fire and horror right at his heels, coming for him.

Right, left, right, right, straight. He chooses hallways at random. They’re all the same, ancient, crumbling stone, the floors slick with damp.

He can feel his heartbeat in his throat, blood and sweat mixing in streams down his back.

He keeps running.

He keeps running, as he looses one, two, three shots into the gloom behind him, as he hears them shatter stonework, the sounds of debris quickly lost in the distance.

He keeps running, as the lights begin to dim and flicker.

He keeps running, until he’s lost in darkness and shadow.

Even the barest features are lost to his sight now, his hand in front of his face indistinguishable. There is no torchlight, no mage light to guide him, only him in the dark, with horror chasing after him. He staggers on, stumbling and sliding in patches of crumbling stone and softer things that splatter across his boots that he tries very hard not to think about. One hand pressed to the wall, the other still clutching the pistol, certain he will feel _it_ behind him at any moment.

“You think you can stop it?” The familiar voice makes him jump. It echoes, sourceless, everywhere and nowhere. “You think there’s a way out?” Familiar, yes, but laced with a coldness and disdain he’s never heard before. At least not directed at him. “I never took you for a fool, _darling_.”

“There is, there has to be. I’ll find one. This isn’t the end. It can’t be.”

“The end? Oh, of course this isn't the end. I'm just not sure you're going to like what you find when you do get there.”

Suddenly in the distance, he spots a singular point of light. Faint and distant, like a fading star, but light nonetheless. He heads towards it, faltering steps finding new surety.

“Look, there, the way out. Vex, look, there it is.”

His words are met with silence.

“Vex?” Hadn’t she been right next to him? He stops, spinning in place, desperately searching the darkness. “Vex!”

A blast of freezing force hits him, like Whitestone’s coldest winter winds increased a thousandfold. The air in his lungs instantly turns to solid ice as he staggers backwards, blown off balance. His hand reaches out to stop his fall…

...and finds nothing. The ground beneath his feet is gone, and he is falling.

Falling.

Falling.

_Crack!_

He meets the ground with a heavy impact and a sudden sick snapping. His vision goes blinding white as he struggles to get air back into his lungs.

“...rcy. Percy!” Large hands, strong hands, grab the front of his shirt, lifting him up and airborne. His vision finally clarifies into the seething, bloodied, tear stained face of Grog.

“The fuck were you?” Grog shakes him as he dangles in the goliath’s grasp, his toes just barely scraping against the stone floor. “The fuck were you?”

“I, I was looking for a way out, I didn’t-”

“They fuckin' needed you and you weren’t there!” Grog continues as if he hadn’t said anything. There’s blood across Grog’s face and hands, and while there are signs of injury, there’s too much of it to be just his.

That’s when he notices.

They’re in the tomb, the tomb of the champion of the Raven Queen. Behind Grog lay the bodies of Vox Machina.

Bloody, charred, evidences of a battle hard fought, a battle lost, they’ve been laid out carefully in a row, Grog tending to the dead as best he could. The air reeks of copper and smoke mixed with seeping, oozing damp. 

Keyleth is burned, the entire right side of her body nothing but cracked, blackened skin, her right hand, claw like now, still clutching the remains of her staff.

Scanlan is torn in half, twisting entrails spilling from his legless torso, the legs themself nowhere to be seen.

Pike is stabbed through the gut, her armor torn and twisted, her white hair dyed pink with gore.

Trinket is beaten, sprawled legs bent at odd angles, chest caved in, spine shattered.

Vax is beheaded, head now lying slightly off from the bloody stump of his neck, black leathers soaked crimson.

Vex-

Vex’s wounds are superficial, no killing blow evident. But she lies there nevertheless, sightless eyes staring up at the crumbling ceiling above.

“They needed you, an’ you weren’t there.”

He can’t look away from the bodies.

“We keep you around for one fuckin' reason! To shoot things! Where the fuck were you when things needed shooting?!”

He’s about to answer, really, he is, the words building up in his throat, when a guttural roar comes from behind him, shaking the floor and dislodging small chunks of stonework that clatter to the ground.

“Something’s coming, I don’t have time to explain, we have to find a way out of here, now.”

“No, you’re gonna fuckin' answer for what you did, you worthless piece of shit.”

The roar is getting louder, larger pieces of stone raining from above, threatening an entire cave in in mere moments. “We have to go!”

And Grog is strong but he is nimble, and he slips out of Grog’s grasp with nothing more than a slight ripping of his shirt. And he’s free and he’s running and he turns back just in time to see the _thing_ impact Grog, darkness and shadow and bloodstained teeth ripping through him as though he were nothing.

Grog screams.

He reaches for the gun on his back, only for his hand to meet nothing but shattered pieces. With sudden clarity he remembers the snap upon his sudden impact. His one weapon is broken.

His one weapon is broken, and he is staring death in the face. He braces for the inevitable.

It never comes.

The roar fades. 

The shaking stops.

The lights dim, and flicker, and go out.

He is once again alone, so very alone, in the dark.

 

Percy’s eyes snap open. 

There’s only the faintest play of shadow across the ceiling, but after the unending dark, it’s something. He sits up, reaching blindly for his glasses. The small fire in his room has faded to nothing more than a few bright embers, not really enough to see by, but enough to focus on. Mechanically, he rebuilds the fire, stacking wood until he has a decent blaze going once again. It’s not strictly necessary, as the snow filled forest outside has no bearing on Scanlan’s perfect pocket dimension, but at the same time, it’s very necessary. When the task is complete, he sits and watches the flames.

But as much as he tries to focus, he can’t get the image of those corpses out of his mind.

He tells himself it’s useless. He knows they’re fine, sleeping soundly in their own individual rooms. To check on them would be pointless, as well as an invasion of privacy. And now, more than ever, he cannot afford to give them any more reason to despise him.

 

The shadow drifts from the onyx blade like a living thing, and Percy screams silently in utter fury.

Though he’s not certain whether it’s the entity that draws his wrath, or himself.

Behind him, Grog’s body lays still and cold, undeniable proof that once again, he’s failed in the worst way possible.

 

_You think you can stop it?_

“How many more of us are going to die?”

_You think there’s a way out?_

“Wait, Percy gave it to you?”

_You’re going to kill us all, Percival._

 

~

 

The airship is not the most comfortable place they’ve slept recently, as it is a cargo ship and therefore not designed for passengers, but at the same time its strange charm is, for some reason, relaxing. After the heat of the Marquesian afternoon the altitudinal chill is refreshing, there is a sense of comforting familiarity about being back on a ship they’ve been on before, and, of course, there is the the fact that they’re finally on an airship again. For a moment, Percy can almost forget the reason they’re on the ship to begin with.

Almost.

As everyone beds down for the night, he finds himself staring at Ripley’s pistol, his fingers tracing over and over the piece of whitestone embedded in its handle. In a personal history full of deadly mistakes, he’s always known Ripley was the worst. He just never figured at the scope of it. And now it’s all coming to a head.

Ripley is not a smart woman, but she is clever, and he knows that if he lets her get the upper hand, things could get very ugly very quickly. He’s been stupid enough to get his family killed before, but he cannot, he will not, let it happen this time.

Not this time.

 

He’s running, staggering through snow that's up to his knees, desperately pushing forward on legs that have long since gone numb from the cold...

**Author's Note:**

> Percy and Vax's conversation is taken verbatim (though not in full) from episode 44, later quotes are from Vax in episode 45 and Keyleth in episode 50, respectively.  
> Special thanks to my bestest friend, @elfgiftspeaks on tumblr, for helping me with the ending.  
> Also, while I didn't take the time to figure out the exact timeline, I'm fairly certain Vex and Grog die within a week of each other, so. That must've been great for Percy.


End file.
